Leukemia Least Of The Risks Facing The Users Of Cocaine

March 6, 1986

``WARNING: Don`t inhale this product because it can severely injure or kill you. It is contaminated with benzene, a cancer-causing chemical linked directly to leukemia, lung damage and birth defects.``

If you saw that warning label, common sense would tell you not to have anything to do with the product.

Unfortunately, common sense has never been a quality associated with cocaine users.

South Floridians and other Americans who use this illegal drug face even greater health risks than before. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has just announced that by the end of 1985, half the cocaine being seized in Florida contained significant amounts of benzene. The DEA fears that more than half the drug now being sold nationwide is similarly contaminated.

Benzene is extremely dangerous to humans, even at very low levels. It is showing up because law officers have made it much more difficult for drug processors to obtain ether, an anesthetic usually used to refine cocaine. Consequently, the processors have switched to the more easily obtainable benzene.

The DEA announcement supports one of the most convincing arguments against illegal drug use: Users never know just exactly how pure the drug is or what it`s contaminated with.

Cocaine has been found ``cut`` with various harmful ingredients, including rat poison. That hasn`t deterred 5 million Americans from being regular users.

Cocaine users are so self-destructive, so blind to reason and so intent on harming themselves that adding a little more poison to the poison they are already taking probably won`t matter much.